C-Realm Podcast

JHK in his kitchen

James Howard Kunstler

KMO and JHK yak about the degraded state of American electoral politics, the Democrat Primary contest, potential campaign surprises, and the potential for cyber-mischief from unexpected quarters. The first part of the conversation is to be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L1NxXzCVUok

KMO talks with an aspiring radio host and consciousness aficionado live in the WOOL, 91.5 FM studio.

The policy priorities:

If Liam had to have a political platform right now, his first draft would be like this:

1. Drastically reduce war/ "defense" spending and divert most of it to...

2. Set up "transition corps" of young people (and displaced soldiers) looking to contribute to a resilient civilization and providing access to basic services/resources in case markets fail during a capitalist collapse/transition: 

   Building Corps- building eco villages and sustainable urban, energy and transportation infrastructure to ensure communities have access to housing +food

   Food Corps- growing (mostly) perennial based food systems and marine permaculture

   Health Corps- providing a baseline level of preventative and "low hanging fruit" healthcare available to the public- including alternative and emerging therapies. Also producing various generic drugs/medicines where markets are keeping prices artificially high

    Science/Teaching Corps- Performing basic research and providing support for local school systems

   Art/Spirit Corps- Why the fuck not- building fun, beauty, self expression and community connectedness into our public priorities.

3. Energy: Investigate and disclose any classified energy/propulsion technologies and develop and deploy ASAP if they are indeed available. Otherwise, or in tandem, deploy recyclable and safe nuclear plants per boy genius Taylor Wilson's vision supplemented with solar, wind and geothermal - tax nonrenweable electric use beyond a certain threshold (luxury use)

4. Increase taxes by orders of magnitude or outright ban dangerous/unsustainable products like pesticides, and herbicides while providing limited exceptions for reasonable transitional uses

5. Democracy Revision: Publicly fund elections, set congressional term limits and MODERNIZE and protect political institutions from power concentration to reflect democratic will (no electoral college, senate seats are population linked, ranked choice voting, ballot initiatives, public input via social internet technologies, restructured supreme court etc)

6. Cancel MANY debts, (at least the interest portion) -at least for federal debts. Interest is a bank's profit from pulling money from thin air. They don't even risk their own money. Depriving them this profit is not an ethical dilemma for me, yet freeing people to do not be forced to earn income to pay taxes in order to pay down federal debt is a clear benefit to me.

7. Tax wealth, not just income. The power gap we have now is not closable by taxing the wealthy's income alone, they hide that too well and, regardless, income represents a fraction of their real power, we must actually tax the wealth they've accumulated.

8. Incentivize/support workers cooperatives, eco villages and community organization. Assume that most solutions will emerge from these organizations and set up conditions for them to thrive and cross pollenate their innovations and insights

9. Education: Find a new way to fund education which is not property taxes as to level the playing field of education so it doesn't disproportionately benefit the children living in wealthy districts. Set up education to focus on individual's interests instead of set curricula, (maybe even make 4th grade and up more like a college, where kids pick courses, teachers and material)- maybe ALSO make meditation as fundamental a skill as Reading, Riting and Rithmetic.

KMO welcomes Ben Burgis, author of Give Them An Argument: Logic for the Left to the C-Realm to talk about why so many people on the left are averse to using logic and rational argument and default to shaming and moral denunciation instead. Ben also explains why the logic bros on the right may not have all that firm a grasp on what makes a compelling argument, even if they have memorized the names of lots of informal fallacies.

William Ryerson

KMO talks with Bill Ryerson of Population Media Center about that organization's decades-long mission to help people in developing countries overcome maladaptive cultural narratives and live more effective lives.

David Blacker returns to the C-Realm Podcast to talk about the themes in his new book, What's Left of the World: Education, Identity and the Post-Work Political Imagination. KMO has been reading Andrew Yang's book, and David has also read it and followed Yang's candidacy, so the discussion circles the topic of Universal Basic Income for a good portion of the conversation.

KMO talks with John Adams, Deputy Director of Biosphere2, a project that started out as a bold attempt to create a closed ecological system that with no inputs of food, water, or oxygen, could sustain 8 humans for 2 years. That didn't go as planned, but since then, Biosphere2 has flourished as a unique Earth systems test laboratory. John Adams describes what's going on at Biosphere2 in the present in this episode of the C-Realm Podcast.

KMO welcomes JP of Egotastic Funtime back to the C-Realm to dissect season 2 of both The Orville (which we love) and Star Trek: Discovery (which we wish we could love). What worked? What didn't? What's on your wish list? Fun stuff!

Earlier this year, KMO distanced himself from the Peak Oil fast collapse narrative saying that surveillance capitalism and artificial intelligence would be a bigger deal in the near term than fossil fuel shortfalls. He didn't say it very clearly, because even careful listeners took that as a declaration that information technology was building a stairway to heaven. This episode represents a renewed attempt at clarity. Thanks to Jim of the Attack Ads! podcast for his collaboration in this effort.

Granted. This is NOT a recent photo. Ain't none of us gettin' any younger. Photo by Olga Kuchukov.

A few weeks ago, KMO came out to Jim Kunstler as a sort of Peak Oil apostate. One of the most passionate and coherent of the people pushing back against KMO's change of opinion on the topic of Peak Oil is his friend and neighbor, Doug. In this episode of the C-Realm Radio show on WOOL, 91.5 FM in Bellows Falls, Vermont, Doug, JHK and KMO revisit that topic and touch on several others, including the prospects for the DNC Primary contest for the 2020 election.

You'll hear many references to Identity Wheels in this conversation.

KMO welcomes Jordan and Fabio, two interns from the Greater Falls Community Justice Center, to the WOOL studio to talk about restorative justice and the need to move away from a primarily punitive form of criminal justice.